Tags: julie flygare

Earlier this month, I took a little staycation (during which I did my "Narcolepsy: Not Alone" photo)...didn't get all the things that I wanted done, and watched even less TV than I do normally. During this time, I didn't check my 'work' email accounts (including the gmail account that I had associated with my work smartphone, which I haven't had one for a long time since I opted to downgrade to a basic prepaid phone on my own dime.)

When I returned to work on August 12 and started catching up on my email, I found a bunch of emails from my cousin June. My grandfather likely passed away due to sudden cardiac arrest Friday night (August 9th, 2013). He wasn't discovered until Saturday morning, slumped over in his walker, when my grandparent's helper showed up. He was 93 (June 12).

Guess there were other emails to my other gmail account (from my parents), but that account has become overrun by emails from places I've shopped and many discussion groups. Need to make more filters to clean things up.

Anyways, I was in shock. I was quite close to him, he's in many of my early childhood memories. Perhaps because he was the other tall person, we shared some common interests (namely photography and home stereo) growing up and he facilitated my growing interests and lead me in how passionate I am in those areas. Which has led me to being equally so in many of the other areas that I've gotten into both personally and professionally. I'll probably never have the a home stereo system like the system that drew my attention in Taiwan, Photography continues to be a part of my life despite it becoming harder and harder to do. It was how my tremor was making it difficult to enjoy my Photography hobby that had led to the diagnosis of Essential Tremor, not that it was making it hard to do precise mouse clicks at work. I've never really been a big GUI person....and as my Tremor progresses, its not likely to change....

While I hadn't seen him since 2010 when I visited him for his 90th birthday, which as it happened was also during an email move at work. In my mind there was that there ought to be a family reunion in 2015 for my grandparents 75th wedding anniversary (and 95th birthday), where we haven't had much of a family reunion since my aunt Clara had passed (in 2004). There was also the thought of a reunion in 2020 for his 100th birthday.

That makes 2000 our last family reunion (and my first cruise), which was for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary and my grandfather's 80th. We did try to have a reunion in 2005 (my third, and final , cruise)...but no Leo, Cathy or Charissa...and my grandparents eventually backed out. They haven't been into air travel for some time, and we weren't able to find a cruise around Los Angeles. We settled on one started/ended in San Diego with arranged car service to transport them to and from the port. Still it was a good cruise, even though I was flying back to so that I could be laid off from my previous job on Christmas Eve.

Then some guilt crept in as I then became angry that I didn't know about his death sooner. Along with trying to figure out bereavement leave policies and whether I could get an airplane ticket, etc. to attend his funeral on August 20th. I managed to mostly keep it together and push through the rest of the day at work. When I finally got home, I was starving and much sadness came in bursts.

Eventually, I call my parents to find out what travel plans they had to give me an idea of what plans I should make for my trip. And, then it was to see about finding an airplane ticket....I had been combing sites earlier looking for tickets for other upcoming trips, like NN Conference in October and Chicago Tardis in November. Which I probably should pull the trigger on purchasing soon, but there's a staging of when I purchase such things to manage the hit on my credit cards....

After some playing around, I find a combination of flying in the morning of August 20th and flying back on the 21st for $440...with ATL being around $470 and ORD being around $415. But, its only for a specific flight out of MHK and a specific flight back to MHK. Moving to either side, practically doubles it.

Also, I had to leave the booking with no seats selected, because the only seats it says are available are preferred or extra room seats, so two levels of extra charges. So, I left it to see what it would do when it tickets, which isn't until the next morning. It has seat assignments for MHK to DFW and DFW to MHK, but neither of the LAX flights have seats.

Should probably get to buying ATL ticket soon (now), though was considering buying ORD first given the notes of only a few seats left at the lowest price.

This has been kind of a strange weekend.... but it all started on Thursday, July 25th, when I got a Facebook invite from Julie Flygare to some "Narcolepsy: Not Alone" Event....

Reading the details about it...it seemed complicated, since I'm still alone....but I soon decided that I was going to do it and starting putting the plan into motion. And, I knew just the gadget to help make this possible....on July 28th, I remembered to go online to look for it. Fortunately, the first place I thought of had it...though sadly its no longer available: http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/collapsable-camera-extender/ (unless it comes back...)

Free shipping gave a range 10-15 days (Aug 7-12?), though in reality it didn't take that long...arriving on July 31st....just under 1.5 days in shipped to delivered.

I then worked on the other details of my plan. I was going to start with the provided sign with a small tweak....though the sign is centered, so I needed to move the text up a bit to make the tweak fit. I wanted to drop a safezone symbol onto it. Though finding a safezone graphic was harder than I thought, but eventually I found something. I used gimp to lay the images together and printed it out.

It looked good, though the "Narcolepsy: Not Alone" was kind of light. I figured I would just need to reprint it later using high quality mode on my inkjet printer. The next step was to figure out when I would actually take this picture.

National Sleep Awareness Week, this year takes place March 3-10, 2013, is an annual public education and awareness campaign to promote the importance of sleep. The week begins with the announcement of the National Sleep Foundation's Sleep in America poll results and ends with the clock change to Daylight Saving Time, where Americans lose one hour of sleep. The Foundation's Sleep Care Center members host events in their local communities throughout the week, providing sleep education and screening to the public.

The last Saturday of the week, is known as Suddenly Sleep Saturday and is also known as Narcolepsy Awareness Day.

On the last Sunday in 2011, March 13, Julie Flygare held the first SLEEP WALK in DC. This year the (3rd Annual) National Sleep Walk is today, March 3rd. Perhaps some day I'll travel for it....

Meanwhile, last year other Sleep Walk events started up across the country and around the world. Some for this year include:

I pre-ordered it on December 8th....but via Amazon Prime, I won't receive it until December 18th. I should make a note to have UPS leave it, while I'm getting my MRI.

The strange thing is on the side of the page is the link to "Tell the publisher! I'd like to read this book on Kindle", rather than a link on the page to the Kindle version. And, I wasn't able to locate the book in the Kindle Books section then.